1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a catalyst for production of multi-walled carbon nanotubes, and more particularly, to a catalyst for production of multi-walled carbon nanotubes, in which the catalyst comprises a transition metal catalyst supported on a support mixture including MgO, and thus can increase the production of multi-walled carbon nanotubes and, at the same time, reduce the number of walls of the multi-walled carbon nanotubes to thereby reduce the surface resistance of the multi-walled carbon nanotubes, and to a method of producing multi-walled carbon nanotubes using the catalyst.
2. Related Art
Carbon nanotubes are large molecules in which hexagonal honeycomb-shaped graphite sheets composed of carbon atoms, each bonded to three other carbon atoms, are rolled into nanosized tubes. These carbon nanotubes have unique physical properties depending on the size or shape.
Carbon nanotubes are generally composed of graphite sheets rolled into a cylindrical shape. Carbon nanotubes can be classified into single-walled carbon nanotubes having one cylindrical graphite sheet, double-walled carbon nanotubes having two cylindrical graphite sheets, and multi-walled carbon nanotubes having three or more cylindrical graphite sheets, and have different properties depending on the number of walls. For example, single-walled or double-walled carbon nanotubes have high electrical properties, and for this reason, are frequently used in device applications such as field emission devices, electronic devices, or sensors, and multi-walled carbon nanotubes have electrical properties inferior to those of single-walled or double-walled carbon nanotubes, but can be used for high-strength composite materials or the like due to their high physical properties.
In order to advantageously apply carbon nanotubes in various fields, a method of synthesizing a large amount of high-purity carbon nanotubes in a cost-effective manner is necessarily required.
In the case of multi-walled carbon nanotubes, there is a problem in that, as the number of walls of multi-walled carbon nanotubes increases, the ratio of disordered graphite increases, resulting in a decrease in the quality of the multi-walled carbon nanotubes. For this reason, efforts have been made to reduce the number of walls of multi-walled carbon nanotubes without reducing the catalytic production of multi-walled carbon nanotubes.
Prior art documents related to the present invention include Korean Patent No. 10-1303061 (published on Sep. 3, 2013) which discloses a catalyst composition for production of multi-walled carbon nanotubes.